In the yoga world, we talk often about how thoughts come first, followed by our words, which eventually determines our actions -- how we live our life. So my advice has always been to watch our thoughts. Even if we can't stop our thoughts, if we just start noticing them, we create a small space in which we can choose -- do I want to keep thinking this thought or not?
It's the difference between obsessing and noticing we are obsessing. If I am obsessing, I can't stop it. But if I notice that I am obsessing, I have a choice to stop doing it.
In the trickle-down theory, this can help us command our life in an immeasurable way.
I truly believe our thoughts rule our world. After all, beliefs are just thoughts we keep thinking over and over.
That's why I need to be diligent about what I think. It tends to become what I believe.
Most people I have encountered in my years of gym experience think about what they do not want or what they can not do. "How I can I get rid of my (microscopic) muffin top/love handles/arm flab/meno-pooch?" or "I hate my (size 6) thighs!" or the ever-present "I can't stand myself at this weight" (129 pounds).
They focus on the negative, and guess what? They are likely to spend a big part of their day running the constant mental loop of thoughts that fill them with anxiety rather than contentment. Whatever you think about, your world eventually becomes.
Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." He knew a thing or two about imagination. I also like to think that he never even noticed his hair and people's opinions about it. His gift to think beyond convention and to question authority and the conclusions of what previous scientists thought. He gave our world some of it's most mind-blowing,scientific theories and discoveries of our time. Even if you are not as smart as Albert Einstein, imagination is one of the world's greatest forces.
The most dynamic aspect of imagination is the ability to form mental images of what does not yet exist.
For a middle-aged woman who has been overweight since childhood and has always been told she'll always be overweight because it's in her family's gene pool or because she's big-boned, has an incredible task to change her thinking to imagining herself in a thinner body.
This is where you have to use what I call creative imagination. This that takes us a
step further than just forming mental images. Creative imagination or thoughts out of the box, create action. It causes things to change, to come into existence.
When we are creatively imagining something, we are actually causing it to come into our life. It's the old "Power of Positive Thinking" or "The Magic of Thinking Big."
Our thoughts are like magnets, literally drawing to us that which we think about with passion or emotion.
In order to get what you want, you have to stop those negative thoughts and allow yourself to dream and not only that, you need to do it on a recurring, steady basis.
This will require that you suspend those old beliefs -- otherwise known as suspension of disbelief; in order to allow your mind to go to new and improved places, thinking about what you want to happen in your own reality, even if it initially seems outrageous. If you think about those wanted changes with enough feeling and belief, you begin to manifest them in your own life.
So starting with your next negative body thought, notice it and pick a new, improved thought to replace it. If "I'll never lose weight, this is just the way I am" crosses your mind, try thinking this, "I am a good person and deserve to have the body I want," or "I trust that my body can achieve and maintain my ideal weight and I know I can do it. It's happening right now!" Then think it again and again and again. Soon your thoughts will form a mental path, your words will flow down this path and then your actions will be a river flowing forth towards what you never, before now, let yourself believe.